Chapter 238: Slow Gains

Ninth Floor. I call up my status. 

Name: Snow Okiyama - Ion

Floor: 6 (4th Ring) - 18

Class: <Vesselsmith> - 24 (III - Tier 2)

Job: <Core Controller> - 31 (III - Tier 3)

Mantle: Architect of the Assembled Archive

Lv. 102

Heart: 68 - Perpetual Pursuit

Power: 36 - Clinging Consequence

Vessel: 797 - Abiding Apathy

Authorities: Efficiency (Initiate), Defiance (Initiate)

Skills:

• [Suppression lv. 40]

• [Selection lv. 36]

• [Solidification lv. 31]

• [Deconstruction lv. 31]

• [Inscription lv. 30]

• [Observation lv. 31]

• [Vessel Construction lv. 20]

• [Obfuscation lv. 20]

• [Annexation lv. 15]

• [Biological Alteration lv. 14]

• [Compression lv. 5]

Mana laces my fingers. My cohort fights around me. I’m close to finishing off vesselsmith. Just one grand thing away. I think about my time in this monolith.

It’s only been a handful of days and I feel so tired of all these people. Cassian is a bratty jerk, who now both admires and has an inferiority complex with me. But I still can’t forgive the way he talked when we first met. He probably only respects climbers, but has such a disregard for flobs. It’s sad.

Grisha is too pushy. Pyro now knows to keep a secret. Arithia is noisy, and Lars somehow feels like he needs to prove himself to me. All of these people, hovering in my space like mosquitos. 

Wire, at least, gets it. Wire doesn’t pester me. Doesn’t ask me annoying questions or whines like Pout. Doesn’t jump around like Nerves. Cold is fine, too. But gosh, there are just too many people. Loud people, annoying people, people with expectations for me.

There’s so much for me to do. I am a busy creature. The separation between my identities is growing thinner and thinner. I can’t imagine that any of my cohort hasn’t figured it out, yet. The only thing keeping me somewhat safe is the Tower’s protection.

And I’ve not been climbing enough recently. Because access to the monoliths is gated. It bothers me so much. The way they need passes. Was that a Tower-sanctioned mechanism, or is Respitia artificially gating advancement for climbers? Even if it was engineered by the Tower, I doubt they’re meant to be so hard to acquire. Perhaps something to spend a request on sometime.

I breathe in and out, ignoring the sounds of the fight around me, as I twist thin strands of mana in my hand. Something stabs Lars, I think. But it’s not my problem yet, not right now. I’m a guide. I pick out the floors, and until now I’ve picked decently. It’s been a fairly calm climb - other than the boneyard. And that one didn’t even have any treasure, annoyingly.

But it’s okay. Despite everything, I like the monolith. I’ve gained a lot of electric essence, especially. Which makes me confident that soon, I won’t be relying on Bay to charge my headphones. She’ll probably be sad, but then again, I’m confident that the parents will wanna stay on these floors.

Just a hunch, of course. 

Breathing deeply, I twist and turn the mana. I encase Vincent’s dead core in another layer of enchantments, mimicking those from Raven’s, the ones Warden put there for me to study. The old grandpa at the top of the Cloudward mono really gifted me a lot. Tomey-tome still hangs by my side, and I feed it mana sometimes. 

Time passes slowly as I etch away at the inscriptions. Another part of my mind plays with Leo’s mana, the cube holding it floating behind me, analysing the structure of the liquid, and thinking of applications for it. I want to understand it properly, because it’s one of those things that I think would really suit my kit.

Mana crystals sprout in my hand, the enchantments taking hold, absorbing the chaotic ambient mana, and turning it into solid additions to the core in my hand.

[Solidification 31 > 32]

[Inscription 30 > 31]

No level in my job yet, but that’s okay. I rise from the floor, smash a few of the strange bone-cloud things that are tearing Arithia apart, and keep watching the group. Dropping some of the exercises, I only maintain my attunement loop and the cruncher. 

As soon as my invisible spells join in, the battlefield turns less chaotic. Enemies slow down at the most crucial of times, and spells fall apart when they need to fail. It’s a very Ion way of fighting, and doesn’t really match Yuki, but that’s okay. 

When I started the climb I thought it was a test for Lars, and it is. His authority was broken when he lost the duel, stripped away by his patron. So he had to earn a new one, and I think he’s close. Probably planning to properly grab it on the tenth floor. Preludes are usually something special, and I think the monolith will throw a curveball at us.

We’ll manage. I crush more bones to dust, absorbing a bit of essence that suits Amelie more than me. My mantle hangs over my shoulders as gossamer fractions, runes dancing across its thin surface. My archive fills out with more ideas.

At the end of the day, that is what I find satisfaction with. I am still growing. This monolith is downscaled to match my current party; mostly flobs. The challenges have not been truly meant for me, not yet. I think that might flip soon.

Another bone monstrosity is crushed to a pulp, the floating bits of enamel and electricity folding in on themselves as I turn it into a pile of dust.

[Deconstruction 31 > 32]

I could say that I let off some steam on the creatures, but that would be a lie. I let my annoyances fall into my apathetic heart. Cassian, Grisha, Lars, Arithia, Maximillian. They’re all okay people who I don’t particularly hate. But they do annoy me, and I forgive them.

There’s much for me to do when I’m out of the monolith. I’ll need to steal from nobles for Owl, heal Bloodstain’s arm, and also get to work on my own body. I really oughta have done that a while ago, but a monolith like this one gives me a good excuse.

It’s why I dumped mana into my eyes in the safe room. I’ll simply claim that I requested healing at the precipice. The excuse might be a bit flimsy, but it might work, especially if the mono is owned by some acolyte of Respitia.

Of course, eventually, the identities will come crashing down on me. But if and when they do, I’ll hopefully be strong enough to deal with it. And if I’m not… I can always run away and make a new identity, I think.

Kuro should still be mostly secret. It’d suck to hide behind my lovely shadow-friend again, but I will do what I must.

With those thoughts sorted out, I crush the last bone-creature. The floor was a simple sandy arena, with a rainstorm overhead. Everyone is soaked, exhausted and bleeding. In front of us, the exit portal to the floor cracks open. I reach for it, swiftly stepping through to the safe room, filled with now-familiar company.

Still, the lord and his retainers shoot me odd glances. Pyro still dutifully wears the eyepatch, but by now, I imagine that there’s very little pain hidden underneath it. Which is nice. I’m happy for him. 

As my team trickles in, I activate my healing skill. Using the practice I got from Pyro, I knit my own eyes together a little again, creating anchor points for the mono’s healing to latch onto. 

[Biological Alteration lv. 14 > 15]

Arithia swiftly stumbles to the fountain and downs a dose of water, and the others soon follow. Only when my vessel is empty do I take my sip, allowing the rejuvenating water to seep into it. 

[Your stats have been reinforced!]

My eyes itch. The inside of my eyeballs, specifically. It’s a kind of horrible feeling, but I swiftly [Suppress] the signals from my nervous system, there. With my eyes regrowing, I can catch the odd glimpses of light through my bandages, but they’re not properly repaired yet, so it’ll still take some time. 

I’m fine with that. This much is enough.

Before Grisha can sit down next to me, Leo fills the spot. The fluffy zoof quickly pulls out the cube of solid mana I gave him, showing… what looks like tooth-marks. 

“You didn’t try to eat it, did you?” 

He grins sheepishly. “I did…”

For a moment, I stare at him. Then, I shrug, pull out the liquid mana, and promptly drink it. He blinks at me with wide-open eyes, then laughs, and takes another bite from my mana. Arithia gives me a look like I’m some kind of maniac, but frankly, I think Leo is onto something.

Feeling his liquid mana decompose within my body is a different sort of breaking it apart than usual. The mana that flows out from the broken liquid and fills my vessel is aspected to me, but it still carries a trace of that history.

Isn’t that a funny thought? Intense skills can probably influence the mana for longer times. My Clinging Consequence is one such example - the skills I cast stick around even afterwards. It probably benefits Leo now, having mana that almost wants to solidify in his body.

For him, it’s different. The liquid mana does course especially swiftly, though. It’s far, far faster to deploy than my usual solid, which is interesting. It also disintegrates faster… I analyze it a whole lot. Leo refills my cube, and I remake his, of course.

The exchange goes over wordlessly, and Grisha shakes her head at our antics. “You two are mad,” she says. 

Perhaps that’s true. Drinking someone else’s aspected mana next to them was a good way to get oneself killed - except, perhaps, with a class like Richard’s. Leo trusts me with his life, evidently, given that he showed me the bitten cube.

Apparently, I trust he won’t kill me either. The zoof gives me a sheepish smile. Yeah, I trust him. We aren’t particularly close. Just acquaintances, really. But, despite that, out of everyone in this monolith, I trust him the most. Pure-hearted idiot that he is.

“A little madness is good!” Leo happily chimes in, already toying with his new mana-cube again.

Like I’m any different. The liquid mana swirls around me under my control, forming a halo and little vortices. What an interesting thing it is. Slowly but surely, I get a better grasp of it. My mind churns as I play around.

These sorts of things are what I live for, I realize.

If I can learn how to make liquid mana and electricity, this monolith will have been worth it. A small smile spreads on my lips, I think. One more floor, and then I get a reward, too. Three doors stand in front of us - and one somewhere else.

A variant floor as the prelude, hm? I glance at Leo. He’s already found it, too, of course, the rapscallion. Ah well. I suppose I don’t mind sharing.

Let’s see how this goes.

Chapter 239: Greed makes Dogs of us All

I look at the leftmost door and see water, a coral reef. Crushing pressure and brutal underwater currents. The middle door has hail and lightning. Conductive ice, I think? Something like that. Seems scary. The rightmost door is a structure - a tall tower, lichtenberg figures carved across its rock.

And then, there’s that ethereal pull at the back of my neck. The mana I can feel buzzing into the air from an entirely different spot. 

[Observation 31 > 32]

Leo tracks the emissions, too. I can see him searching for it. And, perceptive as she is, Arithia swiftly calls us out on it. 

“You found something, weirdos?” Her voice is as abrasive as a batch of steel wool, as always.

Leo, being the kind soul that he is, has more patience for her than I do. “I think there’s a variant floor here.”

He’s their guide, I think. Well, Grisha is the guide, but she wasn’t going to mention the floor. Instead, when Leo does so, the feryran crosses her arms and grins. “Good sense. Variants are more common as the prelude. The budgets for weirdness generally go up as you ascend a monolith. Looking out for special stuff near the precipice is good practice.”

So she’s found it as well. I was unsure whether the old woman had good observational skills. She struck me as the sort to just bash her head into a wall. Then again, her mana control is slightly higher than mine, so what do I know. 

“Well? Where is it?” Cassian demands with a tone of voice that makes it clear he thinks the monolith owes him some treasure. I look the lordling up and down and consider something. How likely is it that he’ll ask for another duel if there’s proper treasure on the floor?

Very likely, I think.

But we’ve not even found the variant floor yet. I hum to myself, spreading my senses wide, trying to pinpoint the direction it’s coming from. It’s… above, slightly. I pulse mana out of me, feeling it ripple across the area.

Cassian even flinches at the mild pressure of it as it rolls across his skin. I would’ve rolled my eyes at him, maybe, but my eyeballs are still half-formed in their sockets at best, so I abstain for now. 

Sighing softly, I draw my mana back in, feeling where the pull on it is strongest. Then, I direct a beam of interest that way. Leo locks onto it almost at the same time I do. Above the fountain, there is a sheet of glass for the ceiling. It rains on it, creating a consistent pitter-pattering on the ceiling. It’s really rather calming.

Which is why it’s a dang shame. I shape my mana into my usual needles, then shoot them upwards, compressing the substance down to a deeper, darker blue-grey. It impacts the glass with a crack. My second and third needle strike the exact same spot, and the final one shatters the window entirely.

Everyone flinches at the noise, as it begins to rain razor-sharp bits of glass. The outside of it is also coated in runes, I note, and swiftly start to pick up a few pieces that Kuro stores for me in the treasure-shadow pocket they ate.

The rainwater mixes with the glass as it falls, leaving a few more cuts on us. Cassian squeals, and Nerves and Pout jump in fear, too. Wire and Cold take it with the calm that the two of them usually exude in the face of most trouble. For my own part, I receive a small cut on my cheek. I don’t mind it.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Water stains my hair, the roaring of wind, and the violent thundercracks shaking the sky. The atmosphere of the safe zone has shifted. Maximillian is the first to act, swiftly kicking off the ground, grabbing the lip of the ceiling, and hoisting himself up. “Hah! There is a portal up here!” 

And then, there’s the noise of him stepping forward - soon stopped by Grisha’s hand on his shoulder. The giant woman moved so fast I could hardly even spot her. “Now, now,” she said. “Let’s not get hasty. When a cohort enters a floor, it’s locked for half an hour, after all. And the best treasures are there for the first who take ‘em.”

Cassian perks up. He swiftly leaps onto the roof as well. I smell violence in the air. Clearly, Arithia does too, because she also jumps on the roof. This time, she’s quiet, though. We all make our way up in our own ways - I manifest stairs made from mana, for example. The cruncher makes it hard to jump high enough. Leo follows me, and by the time we get there, the others are already arguing.

Lars’ fists burn. Maximillian stands there, coated in rocks. I see Cassian draw his rapier from its sheath. The Monolith’s Ire wraps thickly in the air, an invisible sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. I feel the thick, cloying mana wrap ethereal fingers around my neck, the air turning hard to breathe.

It was predictable that this would happen, of course. But there is always one person in my party I can rely on when I need a lot of noise. 

Arithia, thriving in tension as she usually does, grins. “Alright you fuck-ugly bastards, let’s settle this the real way.” She motions to roll up her sleeves. She’s wearing metal armor, so she doesn’t actually do anything, though. “With a good ‘ol fi-”

Then she turns around and sprints for the portal. 

Maximillian can’t catch her. Cassian is too slow. The only person with enough speed is Grisha, who grabs Arithia’s wrist. But the woman just flashes her a smile… and keeps running.

There’s a horrible wrenching noise. Muscle separating from muscle. Tendons tearing as a socket pulls loose with a pop and a rip. 

Arithia’s arm comes off at the shoulder, left in Grisha’s stunned grip. The old, scarred guard, blinks, and then my party member is through the portal. 

The floor’s locked for the other cohorts.

A grim aura settles around Grisha’s shoulders. Fighting in safe zones, and all that. I smile politely and give a small bow. “Apologies for the behaviour of my party member,” I say insincerely. “But it seems as though we must head in there now or risk the Ire.”

Grisha frowns. “We could hold you.”

My smile fades. “You could, yes. You could hope that Arithia dies in there, on her own, with the Ire.” Already, it wraps its fingers around me, beckoning me to leave. “But you already hold the Monolith’s Ire for participating in a rather brutal injury, Grisha. Can you afford more of it?”

The grimace on her face deepens. Then she throws her head back and laughs. “Alright, alright. Have your go at the floor first. The little duke can just confiscate what you find, anyway.”

Politely, I turn my face to Cassian. “I’ll happily duel you for any loot, if you wish to challenge me for it.”

His face sets in a grim line, and he nods. “Then duel we shall. Find something worthwhile risking myself for,” he taunts. Grisha’s mouth opens in disbelief at his idiocy, but she holds her tongue.

Then I smile, shrug, and walk through the portal, towards a giant tree with leaves of living lightning.

Chapter 240: Ashen Wastes

Arithia lays on the floor on the other side, bleeding from the stump that remains of her shoulder. It’s odd to see how she’s so paper frail sometimes, and yet so easily able to recover from wounds most would not bounce back from. We’re at the prelude, now, the last floor before the pinnacle of the monolith.

And, of course, it’s a special floor. Which means the monolith’s rules bend a little. I think that is the only reason Grisha didn’t receive harsher penalties for ripping Arithia’s arm off - perhaps also because her intent was only to delay the woman?

I watch her pitiful body on the floor, as she rolls and curses about the pain. Her eyes are squeezed shut for a long dozen seconds. Then, she cracks one of them open to look at me and see if her performance impressed me. It did not.

“Come on, you’re not even gonna offer?” she asks.

Tilting my head curiously, I reply the only thing I legally should. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Peh, boring!” she snaps, drawing the word out with a deep frown. Then she sits up, the fountain of blood from her arm already ebbing. I brush my mana over the wound, trying to catch a glimpse of anything, and feel a skill and an authority working away at it - before Arithia lays her hand over it.

“‘Scuse me, creepo, but it ain’t polite to peep at a lady!” The words come out with her usual heat, even as she gets up from the ground at roughly the same time that Lars steps through the door. 

He has a frown on his face as he looks at us and the place we’re in. Thunder rumbles across the sky, the air abuzz with electricity. Thick stormclouds cover the sky in a dark tapestry, casting this place in eternal twilight - only for the leaves of lightning that reach outwards from the tree like lashing tendrils to light it back up. 

It casts everything in dramatic shades of light and dark, and as everyone else walks through, I look at the challenge in front of us. We really should have done more due diligence. If I had scanned the portal for longer, it would have probably fed me more information on the floor.

A thin smile grows on my lips. It’s okay. I forgive my past self’s clumsiness, because I do quite love mysteries. And, as light and thunder rumbles over the landscape again, I take my first step.

The ground is made from wet ash. It’s flakes, sticking to the sides of my shoes in streaks of white and grey. It looks as though the area had just recently burnt down, with new foliage already peeking back out from underneath the layer of debris.

Plants seem to rapidly shoot upwards, fed by the ambient mana. I can feel the way they drink it in, absorbing it and synthesizing new bits of themselves, using it to enhance their photosynthesis, perhaps? The magically charged lightning helps, too, I’m sure.

Anything that grows even a handspan taller than me, though, instantly catches one of those fingers of lightning.

The electricity that buzzed amongst the central tree, whose wood is as pale as the ash around us, forms the shape of leaves. They even drift in the wind, and only occasionally lash out with long fingers of violent arcs. 

Of course, behaving like leaves, they also fall in the wind. Whenever a gust picks up, the ash stirs, brushing our legwear and smearing it, too. And with that stirring ash, the leaves fall. They drift towards the tallest things in the vicinity, as if attracted by magnets.

Around us, a handful of magical plants touch them. The greenery can’t exactly run away in the same way that we do, and I watch the leaf unfold. It turns into a half-living abomination of lightning, digging mandibles of sparking heat through the plant matter.

Unlike a normal lightning strike, these things latch one. Sometimes two, even three leaves onto the same plant, clinging to it in serpentine coils of heat until nothing but ash is left. I watch the tallest plant, a vine that grew up to two metres, turn to ash in mere moments as the leaves cling onto it.

Unfortunately, with it gone, Wire is the tallest thing around.

Now, if it were me, I would probably let myself get hit. I’m curious about the consequences and the way it sticks to people, but tragically, Wire is both metallic and also terribly fragile. Now, obviously, terribly fragile still leaves her with a higher heart score than me, but her skills are a lot less geared towards self defense.

So, of course, I reach out to the leaf with a simple [Selection] and [Deconstruction] loop. 

And I only feel a brief blink of fear when the former latches on and the leaf instantly unfurls. 

The moment my pale mana touches it and establishes the thread between us, the lightning surges forward. It lances along the connection, catching my [Deconstruction] packet halfway. It was an experimental one, probing at the leaf’s weaknesses as I use half a dozen different tools for unmaking its structure.

But, like it’s alive, the leaf adjusts. My packet of destructive mana bores holes into it, cuts at weaknesses in its structure, crushes nodes where it is strongest, and yet. Despite that, the lightning-thing surges forward, half its body torn to ribbons of dissipating plasma.

I form another tiny [Deconstruction] and send it down the tether before it hits me, adjusting for what I’ve learned, but it’s not enough. More of its formless body is torn to ribbons, but what is left lunges onto me, digging in.

Arcing electricity forms fangs that punctures my skin. My blood hisses and sizzles as it evaporates from the heat, my skin burning. I [Suppress] the pain, swiftly gathering more mana and forming a far, far stronger [Deconstruction]. 

This one slams into the monster and wipes its remnants away. The electricity still leaves my body numb and tingling, its remaining bits sending shocks through my stiff muscles. But despite that, my archive is already picking apart what I’ve learned from the leaf-thing.

Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

A smile spreads on my lips, even as the smell of burnt meat steams from my wound. I twist my mana into ribbons of healing, and my flesh knits shut in a moment, blackened skin replaced by pale one underneath my shirt. It’s invisible to the rest of the group, but Arithia literally asked me for healing, so I think they know.

But that’s okay. I have been sloppy, and for that, I forgive myself. Despite my mistake, I don’t regret it. In fact, as another leaf dances nearby, I shoot another packet of mana at it, enough to smear the plasma through the air like paint across a canvas. I breathe in the wet air. 

[Deconstruction 32 > 33]

Yeah. This floor’s gonna be a good time.

- - - 

The other’s faces are grim as we trudge through the wasteland. Lars, especially, lets his eyes dart all about. The tree in the distance is clearly the goal, but as we near it, there’s more in the way. Houses made from scorched stone stand empty in this place. Their blackened bricks remain standing even amongst a sea of ash.

Our most anxious fire-user rummages through old chests and bookshelves, but comes away empty each time, shaking his head. No one strays too far from me, all of them relying on me to shoot the electricity from the air with well-timed [Deconstructions], or attracting it towards me with [Selection].

Of course, I am not an idiot. I only ever let one of the lightning things chew on me at a time, since unmaking them while they’re eating feeds me a whole lot more essence. I’ve only done so another three times by now, and the picture still feels wholly incomplete.

I think that the tree is alive, and has an epitaph similar to my Clinging Consequence. Maybe, if I were to name it, it might be something like ‘Attrition of Autonomy’? The leaves are clearly summoned by magic, and the tree is powerful enough to change the weather of this entire area.

The ash beneath my feet still smells of ozone. The plants, which grow rapidly, are unmade by me too. 

Frankly, this place is a magical paradise. Between the lightning things and the fast-growing plants, I can improve my healing spell, my enchanting, my epitaphs… it feels like I’m already soaking in the magic of this place, and I love it.

Sadly, my group is less enthusiastic. Nerves flinches at every rumble of thunder that crosses the sky, and Arithia seems a little tired from blood loss. We search through the houses in hopes of treasures, but come up empty again and again.

The only thing we find before the thirty minutes are up is a set of tattered cloaks. Of course, I take the liberty to imbue a few swift enchantments into them, borrowing from the Faraday-cage I made, and the enchantments on the enchanted floor-tile Grisha tossed me.

[Inscription 31 > 32]

With these, my companions should be a little less conductive. Indeed, the lightning leaf-bugs are more attracted to me now, and I simply smile as I tear them apart. We trudge through the ash, when a ripple rolls across the floor.

The new authority is metallic and thick with the taste of iron. It’s too far away to reach us right now, but one after another, similar presences unfurl. They stake themselves into the earth like bars of a cage.

With interest, I observe as the tree takes notice of this activity. A breeze picks up, and dozens, then hundreds of leaves begin to rain down, caught on the wind. I hold back my laughter as thunder rumbles across the sky, and the lightning-things drift towards the new arrivals.

As the humble and entirely fair individuals we are, we, of course, take advantage of this lucky moment and start sprinting towards the tree. If there’s treasure anywhere on this floor, it’ll be there, and Grisha just so politely opened up the way for us. 

Unfortunately, as we move nearer, another breeze picks up, blowing a storm of leaves our way, too. My cheeks hurt a little, and I think I must have been smiling too much.

Please, dear monolith. Feed me more essence.